For Want Of Grain
by tasteofhysteria
Summary: She hasn't seen him personally since he was much smaller, but now she's welcoming him into this slapdash family of unwilling participants as if it were some elite circle.


Hospitality would've dictated that she greet him with klib bread and salt.

But as it stood, all she could manage for the sake of practicality was a kind word and a kiss to each cheek with the hopes that being so affectionate might bring a blush to his face to warm him like it did when Bessarabia was younger (though he was the Moldavian…something or another nowadays). After all, the days were growing short and frigid with the nights long and bitterly cold and she had to have a care with how much coal she used before this week's ration was doled out.

"You've grown so much since I saw you last, Eyonya."

A lie, that. One both kind and cruel. Ion _had _grown, collecting precious centimeters of height but gaining that pinched, hungry look of one who has done quite a bit of growing in a too-small amount of time. His bulky winter greatcoat was an obvious hand-me-down, hanging loosely on his thin frame. The sleeves were wide and too long for his arms, the cuffs rolled numerous times so that his hands were free, revealing skinny wrists with prominent bones where the skin was stretched taut and winter-white over them. And lanky though his legs were (and thin like a colt's), the coat hem hung nearly to his knees.

Ion still stood silently and stooped in the doorway, hood still pulled up around his face and head drooping as if it took too much effort to hold himself upright.

Though that could either be exhaustion or a very clever survival tactic, seeing as her brother still stood behind Ion with his hands folded behind his back, an endlessly pleased smile on his pale face, punctuated by rosy points of colour high in his cheeks.

This was good as well, she decided. Having everyone together like this made Vanechka happy and made him feel safe and there was little harm in the lie for the moment.

"He's been quiet the whole way from Bucharest," Ivan stated calmly, reaching out to clap a large hand on Ion's narrow, bony shoulder. "Maybe I'm just getting old, but I don't remember him being the introverted sort. And Romania put up such a fuss about the whole thing." He gave her a bewildered look, as if he couldn't understand why anyone would protest.

"I'm…sure everyone has just been tired." She offered her protest lamely, surreptitiously drawing Ion out from beneath her brother's hand to pull him closer. "You know as well as any how everything begins to take its toll."

He paused for a moment at her words and then nodded agreeably before shifting his weight and rubbing his hands together to chase away the cold hiding in the lines of his palms.

"But I should go. The hour is getting late and there will be much to do tomorrow, no? Rest well, sister. And do take care of our new little brother tonight."

She bid him farewell while guiding Ion inside, shutting the door firmly behind her.

"And you; you've been so quiet, Eyonya. I'm used to you chattering so fast I can hardly understand it."

She laughed then and it sounded fake and pitchy and nervous even to her own ears. There was no response and she began to tug his coat down, smoothing away wrinkles with an attentive hand to her task.

"Unfortunate about the colours, I know. But there's a practicality to it that you have to admire. It's certainly nothing like the old ways and your white clothes with that pretty red and black and gold embroidery was always so lovely…"

She was babbling, she knew, but the silence hung too thick and heavy and stunk of wrongness.

"…you're really going to make me have a conversation with the wall at this rate," she chided him gently. "Come now, manners. Take your hood off; we're indoors now and it's rude."

Eventually, narrow hands with fingers that seemed alien in their length from the prominence of the joints reached up hesitantly to push the hood down. Lyubochka had to swallow down the cry of dismay to see Ion's long cinnamon-brown curls shorn away, hair cut almost _too _close to the scalp.

The worst part, far worse than the loss of his hair, was the glassy look in his pale gray eyes, as if he was watching something happening far away from here. His lips were thin and bloodlessly pale, pressed into a firm line as he stared back at her, through her, perhaps not even seeing her at all. And she, for her part, could only frame his thin, moony face in her hands and murmur selfish, selfless, insignificant, insincere words to try and lure him back to this shared burden.


End file.
